JonEFive

I don't even know how true that is with the number of streaming services and proliferation of independent producers on sites like youtube. Although to that point, they're aren't any really viable competitors to YouTube.

You make a good argument. Antitrust laws aren't solely about stopping a business that has become a monopoly but preventing monopolistic behavior in the first place. For example, buying out competitors and new comers to limit consumer choice. You have a point that there is a ton of choice in the gaming industry.

Let's also look at it this way: Microsoft also owns Xbox. And according to Axios, they manage 23 game studios. They might not be exhibiting anticompetitive behavior yet, but buying up publishers and studios allows them to control larger and larger portions of the market. That can affect anything from the cost of games to consumers to the amount developers can get paid. It can also affect publishers' access to Xbox as a platform.

Microsoft doesn't seem to be doing those things right now, but the whole point of anti trust laws is to prevent businesses from getting to the size that they are capable of exerting that kind of force in the overall market.

It's amazing how poorly government employees understand the constitution. Or if you prefer the more cynical view, it's amazing how much government officials can knowingly get away with in terms of unconstitutional behavior.

There are many ways you could have dealt with it, but as far as I can see you've dealt with the issue as honorably as you could have

It's certainly a far cry away from "We will remain profit driven until profits arrive" that a certain someone said in response to a legitimate question over on the other site. A breath of fresh air really.

Agreed. I had already created an account on a Lemmy instance (Lemmy.one since I wanted to avoid the two main .ml instances). I had just about settled but decided to give Kbin a try. While it doesn't seem quite as far along in it's development, it struck me as a better user experience. Combined with reservations I have about the Lemmy developers... Well, here we are. And seeing this level of involvement and dedication to doing the right thing from the developer confirms that choice. Kudos @ernest

Truth, but I'd rather they block some monopolies than none.

We've reached a point where leaders have realized that they can literally flip their supporters the middle finger, call them all idiots, and still have people consume their product. It used to be that CEOs used to at least try to hide behind PR image management consultants, but these days? Well, to quote our former US president "I could shoot a man in the middle of Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for me." And he's right. I'm not trying to get into a political discussion, more a societal one - this is where we are as a society - where leaders can do awful things and yet people shrug their shoulders and keep doing what they're doing as though nothing happened.

Louis Rossmann made a really good point about all of this too. A 2-day blackout is perhaps worse than doing nothing. All it does is prove that people will go away for a day or two, then come back and continue on like nothing happened. It proves that no matter how angry you make your customers, they'll be back.

I'm really glad to see so many communities have committed to going private indefinitely. I'm also glad to see just how many users are leaving the site "permanently" (one can hope they remain true to that). The only way that a company will learn is if they suffer consequences that actually affect their bottom line. PR doesn't mean jack these days, only profit.